Federal law enforcement officials secretly seized years’ worth of a New York Times reporter’s phone and email records this year in an investigation of classified information leaks. It was the first known instance of the Justice Department going after a reporter’s data under President Trump.The seizure — disclosed in a letter to the reporter, Ali Watkins — suggested that prosecutors under the Trump administration will continue the aggressive tactics employed under President Barack Obama. Mr. Trump has complained bitterly about leaks and demanded that law enforcement officials seek criminal charges against government officials involved in illegal and sometimes embarrassing disclosures...

The matter of Gen. Michael Flynn began with criminal conduct. But it was not committed by Flynn. The crimes were leaking the contents of classified telephone conversations between Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and revealing the identity of Flynn as a party to the conversations. The sorry saga began with a January 12, 2017 column about the Flynn/Kislyak conversations by The Washington Post’s David Ignatius, who described his source as a “senior U.S. government official,” i.e., an Obama administration functionary. Whoever told Ignatius the fact of and substance of the eavesdropped conversations committed a felony by leaking classified information....

Deep State: In a bombshell revelation, House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., told Fox News‘ Laura Ingraham Thursday that the FBI “coordinated” leaks to the media in order to use them as justification for obtaining FISA court warrants on what appear to be false pretenses. The FISA warrants, which were used to spy on minor 2016 Trump campaign figure Carter Page in an attempt to link him and Team Trump to a ‘Russian collusion’ narrative, were subsequently renewed three times after the initial warrant was issued in October 2016 — all of the renewals after POTUS Trump won the...

PRESIDENT TRUMP’S NATIONAL security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn, was forced to resign on Monday night as a result of getting caught lying about whether he discussed sanctions in a December telephone call with a Russian diplomat. The only reason the public learned about Flynn’s lie is because someone inside the U.S. government violated the criminal law by leaking the contents of Flynn’s intercepted communications. In the spectrum of crimes involving the leaking of classified information, publicly revealing the contents of SIGINT — signals intelligence — is one of the most serious felonies. Journalists (and all other nongovernmental citizens) can be...

President Trump's former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, is reportedly set to plead guilty for misstatements he made to Congress while testifying about his contacts with Russians during the presidential campaign. ABC, citing anonymous sources, reported that Cohen is expected to appear in a federal court in Manhattan on Thursday after reaching a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller. The misstatements stem from testimony he gave in 2017. The plea from Cohen marks the first time he has been charged by Mueller as part of his investigation into Russian election interference.

Newly declassified documents reveal the CIA—which is supposed to be strictly limited in the types of surveillance and other secret operations it conducts on U.S. soil—routinely monitors U.S. government computer systems. That information is contained in two formerly secret letters of “congressional notification” written in 2014 by the Intelligence Community inspector general at the time, Charles McCullough. In the letters, McCullough reveals the CIA secretly intercepted and collected emails between congressional staff and the CIA’s head of whistleblowing and source protection. The collection was said to occur as part of the CIA’s “routine counterintelligence monitoring of government computer systems.” Several...

In recent weeks, a grand jury in Washington has listened to more than a dozen hours of testimony and FBI technicians have pored over gigabytes of electronic messages as part of the special counsel’s quest to solve one burning mystery: Did longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone — or any other associate of the president — have advance knowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to release hacked Democratic emails in 2016? While outwardly quiet for the last month, Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have been aggressively pursuing leads behind the scenes about whether Stone was in communication with the online group, whose disclosures...

You might remember back in May 2018 when sketchy porn lawyer Michael Avenetti was releasing U.S. Treasury notifications on Michael Cohen received from an unknown source within the Treasury Department. You might also remember when New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow wrote a sympathetic article after talking to the leaking treasury official. As a result the Treasury Inspector General began an investigation. Today, a U.S. Treasury employee named Natalie Mayflower Sours-Edwards was arrested and charged with leaking to numerous reporters multiple financial reports about suspicious financial transactions related to: Paul Manafort, Richard Gates, Maria Butina, and others.

Shortened title. Full title: Deep State Treasury Leaker Arrested – Senior U.S. Treasury Official Arrested for Leaking Financial Forms To Media You might remember back in May 2018 when sketchy porn lawyer Michael Avenetti was releasing U.S. Treasury notifications on Michael Cohen received from an unknown source within the Treasury Department [See Here]. You might also remember when New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow wrote a sympathetic article after talking to the leaking treasury official [See Here]. As a result the Treasury Inspector General began an investigation.

A Treasury Department employee has been charged with leaking confidential banking reports of suspects charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Federal prosecutors say Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards is set to appear in court Wednesday in Virginia. The 40-year-old Edwards is a senior official at the department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. She’s accused of leaking the material to a journalist — who’s not named in court papers. Prosecutors say reports on Paul Manafort, Richard Gates and Maria Butina were among those leaked. …

A former security director for the Senate Intelligence Committee (James Wolfe) has pleaded guilty to one count of giving a false statement to FBI agents looking into leaks of national security information to several reporters, the Justice Department announced Monday. ...Wolfe had been scheduled to appear for a routine status hearing, before prosecutors announced that "substantial" negotiations had produced a guilty plea.

“He’s going to be on the Supreme Court with a huge taint and a big asterisk after his name,” said Ms. Hirono on ABC’s “This Week.” “The partisanship that he showed was astounding.” Ms. Hirono, a prominent Kavanaugh critic, made the rounds on the Sunday shows blasting Republicans for their support of President Trump’s nominee, in particular Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican. . . . Ms. Hirono called her explanation “insulting.” “To say that she thinks that Dr. Ford thinks that she was assaulted, what is that? Is she mistaken?” asked Ms. Hirono.

Full title: This Sentence From Grassley's Latest Letter to Ford's Attorneys Suggests Huge Discovery About Contact With Dems In a letter to Dr. Christine Blasey FordÂ’s legal team, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley asked for records and descriptions of any communications with senators or their staffs. But he didnÂ’t stop there. Grassley specifically named Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Mazie Hirono Â“in light of recently uncovered information.Â” "I urge you once again, now for the third time in writing, to turn over the therapy notes, polygraph materials, and communications with The Washington Post that Dr. Ford has relied upon as...

Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday declared he’ll call for an investigation of the Democrats’ rollout of Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, calling it “a despicable process.” In an interview on ABC News’ “This Week,” the South Carolina Republican asserted there was a betrayal of Ford’s trust in leaking her initial confidential accusation. “Who in [California Democrat Sen. Dianne] Feinstein's office betrayed her trust?” Graham said. “Why Dr. Ford didn't know we were willing to come to California. We'll do a wholesale investigation of what I think was a despicable process." Graham added that...

Released messages document how Mueller’s spokesman took dozens of meetings with reporters over three months in 2017. Reporters from nearly every major media outlet have been jockeying for influence and favoritism within the special counsel’s office. One awkward exchange illustrates a reporter from CNN trashing an article written by White House correspondent Jim Acosta. Hundreds of pages of emails and text messages released from the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) special counsel’s office through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request show an ongoing relationship between Robert Mueller’s team and the press, according to an investigation by The Daily Caller News...

Rep. Meadows sent a letter to Deputy AG Rosenstein saying a "review of the new documents raises greave concerns regarding an apparent systemic culture of media leaking by high-ranking officials at the FBI and DOJ related to ongoing investigations" ================================================================= Newly released text messages and documents obtained by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee reveal that senior members of the FBI and Department of Justice led a coordinated effort to leak unverified information to the press regarding alleged collusion with Russia to damage President Donald Trump’s administration, according to a letter sent by the committee to the DOJ Monday....

Just last week I opined on how troubling it was that the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) apparently targeted and used media to further, in the court of public opinion, an as-yet-unproven Russia-collusion case against Donald Trump. Now, belatedly released information from the files of those favorite FBI lovebirds — Peter Strzok and Lisa Page — has created even more concern that the top echelons of America’s premier law enforcement were involved in name-smearing media leaks. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, disclosed in a letter Monday to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that,...

Peter Strzok sent Lisa Page a text message about “media leak strategy” during a key point in the Trump-Russia probe. Strzok sent the message just before The Washington Post published a bombshell story about the FBI obtaining surveillance warrants against Carter Page. North Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Meadows says the messages raise “grave concerns” about an “apparent systemic culture of leaking” at the FBI and DOJ. Newly released text messages show disgraced FBI official Peter Strzok asked to speak to former FBI lawyer Lisa Page about a “media leak strategy” during a crucial period of the Trump-Russia investigation in 2017....

FBI agent Peter Strzok conspired with his in-house lover to leak anti-Trump stories to the media in spring 2017 when he headed the Russia probe into the Trump campaign, a congressman said on Monday. Rep. Mark Meadows, North Carolina Republican, sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein saying a House task force had just received a new shipment of Justice Department documents. “Our review of these new documents raises grave concerns regarding an apparent systemic culture of media leaking by high-ranking officials at FBI and DOJ,” Mr. Meadows said. “Review of these new documents suggest a coordinated effort...

New text messages between ex-FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page reveal others were "leaking like mad" in the run-up to the Trump-Russia collusion probe, according to new communications between the former lovers obtained exclusively by Fox News. A lengthy exchange dated Dec. 15, 2016 appears to reveal a potential leak operation for “political” purposes. “Oh, remind me to tell you tomorrow about the times doing a story about the rnc hacks,” Page texted Strzok. “And more than they already did? I told you Quinn told me they pulling out all the stops on some story…” Strzok replied. A source...